In July, Seth Pinsky, then the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, announced he would soon shift from the public sector to the private sector. In his decade-long stint at the EDC, Mr. Pinsky boosted his reputation citywide by helping to secure a number of high-profile development projects, including Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards and the Cornell Tech campus, and by initiating the response to areas of the city hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy. In his next chapter, Mr. Pinsky will spearhead RXR Realty’s Emerging Markets platform, which aims to identify growth opportunities in New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area. Mr. Pinsky, who joined RXR last month as executive vice president, spoke with The Commercial Observer last week at the developer’s Midtown offices and spent time discussing his tenure at the EDC and his new role.
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Global creative and strategic agency Droga5 will be trading in their Noho headquarters and taking the plunge downtown to 120 Wall Street.

The company follows nearly 400 companies from various sectors that have relocated to Lower Manhattan since 2005, Downtown Alliance noted. 120 Wall Street, owned by Silverstein Properties, is currently undergoing a capital improvement program to modernize its facade, lobby, elevator cabs in effort of attracting even more firms to the building.
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On Thursday, Nov. 1, Virgo Business Centers made 27,321 square feet of temporary, furnished office space available at 14 Penn Plaza. Companies displaced by Hurricane Sandy filed in one by one, and by the following Thursday, the space was full.

“Typically, that process takes about a year,” said Pasha Erkin, director of sales at the company. “It’s all about readiness. You could literally bring me 40 people today, and I could have the space ready tomorrow. All you have to do is walk in, flip on a switch, plug in and start working.”

In that building alone, the company took on 177 employees from displaced companies like Coronet, amfAR, Linda Decorato, Ambrose and others located on the eastern tip of Downtown and other areas hit hard by the hurricane.
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In addition to getting a request from Deloitte for a $20 million subsidy package Thursday, the city’s Industrial Development Agency is also slated to present a reworked subsidy package for Reuters, which was given up to $26 million in incentives from the Giuliani administration. [Clarified]

In short, Reuters received the $26 million incentive package Read More

World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, Queens developer Jeff Levine and Related Cos. chairman Stephen Ross are among those seeking to develop Willets Point, the polluted, 62-acre auto repair district next to Citi Field, according to city records.

The names are part of a list of 29 firms released by the Bloomberg administration in response Read More

In the past month there’s been a fair amount of deals closing at Willets Point, with the Bloomberg administration finishing up the acquisitions that it negotiated with some of the property owners on the industrial site by Citi Field that’s slated for a major redevelopment.